Their show has all types of acts, traditional and nouveau: sword-swallowers, fire-breathers, etc, and Boobzilla. Boobzilla is the world's champion breast weightlifter, with 44LL natural breasts. Her awesome abilities are alone worth admission.

Don't know what nanotechnology is, or how it may apply to you and your company?

Well, then this event may be perfect for you.

- - -

One can look at the potential impact of nanotechnology in the next two decades like the impact of information technology (IT) in the last two decades:

Even though entirely new sectors of the economy were generated by the emergence of IT and novel applications, the spread of IT to all corners of the economy is what really drove global productivity and made new applications stick. IT has affected the way we sell insurance, administer health care, inspect our automoblies, and communicate with our loved ones.

Similarly, while your life or manufacturing firm may not be a producer of nanotechnology theories and experiements, the applications of nanotechnology may have a great impact on your future well-being and profitability.

This weekend will be a good one to get your friends out of their houses and away from those lame-ass bars on route 224. Time to experience some dtown ytown halloween traditions.

One packed place will be Cedars on Saturday, where the Zou will be performing their annual Rocky Horror show.

The past four years this show has been put on have definitely been good ones - and this year, the music begins at 10pm with Jones for Revival (great band live) followed by the Dead Beat Poets. Costume prizes will be passed out, yadda, yadda.

The Zou's first set will be sans Rocky Horror drag, so you can hear some of their more traditional songs, the lyrics of which are written on this betty's ribcage:

Then on Sunday at 7pm, the annual Stage Fright open-mic will take place at the Oakland. The last one, hosted by Miss Brooke was awesome, and there are still a slot or two available for bands, so go here for more information. There will be trick-er-treating and a fashion show this year, besides all the regular music bits, bellydancing, magic acts, and sketch comedy.

Rules of The Stage:

1. There is no crying at the Stage

2. You can do almost anything on stage as long as it's a.) legal, and b.) doesn't involve any flags

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

the multi-ton weights were removed from the elevator shaft with some amazing crane work from the business incubator parking lot. With some additional demolition work, light is now passing from floor to floor.

One of the stairways was removed as well.

The entrance to the commercial component of the building (ground floor) will be from Federal Street, and the entrance to the architectural offices (second floor) and residential (third floor) will be from Dutton's Alley.

Looking from the roof in one direction, one can see the former Pick Ohio Hotel, now residences filled with people.

And from the roof facing Federal Street, one can see the tops of the cathedral and the communications tower.

The demolition continues, with the roof to be replaced soon, and then more construction and building new components will begin.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Met some friends to get some food Friday night, and parts of Federal Street were closed off. There were tables, seats, tents, and a place for dancing set up along our main drag - all unfortunately empty.

Vendors were there, selling pretzels, hot sandwiches, German beer in enormous glasses, and some very tasty homemade macadamia cookies. The band was supposed to play till 11pm, but they packed it up early, so then there was an empty stage as well.

The Oktoberfest continued on Saturday. Stopped by in the early afternoon and it was empty. And this was two blocks away at the Children's Museum, where hundreds and hundreds of people and their kids were celebrating at the Halloween Spooktacular. When the band took a break, they quadrupled the number of people in the audience. Prost! (these guys were awesome, btw)

Stopped by immediately after the YSU football victory (thousands and thousands at the stadium), bringing someone from California and it was empty. Stopped by later that evening, empty as well. Not a good demonstration of a lively place to visitors.

here are some videos at various times and days of the event:

When I asked around to various bloggers, students, and media personalities, no one heard about the Oktoberfest.

Not to sound snarky, but when the people who are actively looking for things about Youngstown don't hear about an event like this, how is the public supposed to discover it?

So perhaps advertising is at the heart of the problem.

There are a number of events downtown this year that had a similar lack of attendance, including several West End parties and a few others listed on the pamphlet of events released by the Office of Economic Development.

To be sure, there have been great events as well that were heavily visited, and the city should be commended for its efforts. Whoever advertised for these successful gatherings should be commended.

Maybe the event should have been announced at the YSU game, where there were thousands of people a couple of blocks away. Maybe the event could have been displayed on the home page of the city's website. Maybe the city can start a blog to publicize it's events.

In all of this, the people I feel bad for are the champs in the private sector who stepped up last weekend.

This includes the owners of Imbibe who made a serious effort to bring German beer and food to the event. It also can't be fun for a handful of bands, some clad in traditional German attire, to play to an empty crowd. Hopefully, if the event occurs again, these people will remain involved, but one wonders how much their partnership can continue when the lack of participation is so apparent.

As the downtown progresses though ups and downs, a critical eye will be needed to observe what works and what doesn't - and the city will need to make the changes so future events are successes and not flops.

Are their any recommendations you can provide to make these events more heavily attended?

Friday, October 12, 2007

Have you ever found something online that makes you scream out: "YES, this is exactly what I'm looking for!"

Something that weaves together design, economic development, technology, city planning, and the plans for the future . . .

It happened to me recently as I discovered the archives of Dr. Sherry Linkon's radio interview show, Lincoln Avenue.

These shows regularly air on Wednesdays at 7:30pm on wysu, and you can now listen to the shows as mp3s or subscribe to them as podcasts. You can even leave comments about the interviews on the show's blog.

It's my humble opinion that everyone in Northeast Ohio should be listening to these shows. It's a great way to get plugged in on all the things going on in the region.

If you even wanted a crash course on the tech-based economic development landscape of Northeast Ohio, this interview with Chris Mather from TechLift last week is a great place to start.

This recent interview with Tim Ryan (yesterday's show) goes over the ideas for the TechBelt initiative: a research, innovation, and commercialization corridor running from Cleveland to Akron to Youngstown to Pittsburgh.

Friday, October 05, 2007

Kelly Pavlik, the newly crowned middleweight champion of the world, was asked by his promoter Top Rank to be in Las Vegas for a fight this weekend.

No thanks, Kelly said.

Instead he'll be home in the city of Youngstown, with a downtown celebration beginning at 5pm Friday afternoon.

Everyone from Northeast Ohio and Western Pennsylvania is invited to downtown youngstown tomorrow afternoon.

"We had talked about an event to honor him before the fight and we are so excited to celebrate his victory," said Mayor Jay Williams. "What a celebration we're going to have in the streets of Youngstown."

Pavlik and his team will arrive around 5:30 p.m. from the southside, crossing over the Market Street Bridge and flanked by the city's police department honor guard, the fire department, and the Plazateer Band until the motorcade finishes at Central Square near the Man on the Monument.

The title of the celebration will be:

"Back Home Where It All Began"

Kelly and the rest of Team Pavlik will address the crowd; music, music, and more music will rock the downtown along with other entertainment; and partying will continue into the night.

Thursday, October 04, 2007

As mentioned several months ago, this blog will be the official website chronicling the renovation of the Davis Building, located along Federal Street in downtown youngstown.

The continued progress of this project will show how it is indeed possible to save the historical buildings in our downtown and prepare them for future usage. In this case, this structure will be turned into commercial space on the ground floor, an architectural firm on the second, and a private residence on the third. All stories involving this building will be labeled with the "davis building" tag on blogger for future reference.

Here is a pretty old photo of the exterior. At one point, the building was only one story and then in 1899 the top two floors were added. This picture must have been taken before 1927, as the State Theater which now exists on the left of the Davis Building in present times is not visible.

It's neat to see the brick streets and the usage of the store for "hotel supplies".

At some point, the facade of the building was "modernized" with grey panels. This is similar to what's happened to the current national city bank downtown, which underneath has a red brick facade created by the important local african-american architect P. Ross Berry.

To attach the paneling, holes were drilled into the original brick and terra cotta which are currently visible. Here is a photo of what the building looked like a few weeks ago:

You can see some of the remaining grey paneling on the top of the building.

Awesome. Now let's go inside the building. Looking up through one of the holes between floors...

Here is a photo from the second floor looking out onto Federal Street. The view from every floor is the front of the historically beautiful McKelvey's department store poorly designed, cheap and monotone Children''s Services Building. So besides the big-box store feel emanating from the other side of the street, the view is pretty nice. Especially the tree-lined medians along West Federal.

Then leading out from the interior exit . . .

. . . you can see the exterior fire escape.

Tomorrow, we'll take our first look at the building with the scaffolding on the exterior as well as the masonry details, both old and new.

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

Over the summer, city planning graduate students from the University of Michigan came to Youngstown to participate in a design studio. For parts of three days, they met various stakeholders including university and business representatives, city government, and youngstown bloggers, among others.

Then they came back.

Four teams of students presented their ideas and concepts at the downtown convocation center, and recently these presentations have been put online.

You can access the content of the four presentations here. A warning though, the file is a 25 MB pdf because of all the pictures contained within.

Here is just a sample of their ideas, many of them easy to implement and some of them are complex in scale. I particularly liked the presentation that brought the water element into various parts of the downtown.

Please note: this project was a design studio for a university class. It is NOT final design ideas set in stone. Do not get angry if you do not like certain components, because they are at a very preliminary stage of planning and imagining.

However, if you like certain concepts of these plans, be loud about it. Share them with your neighbors and tell others what you think. Perhaps by being loud with your opinions, some of these ideas can become a reality.

And thanks to the students for coming to Youngstown and sharing your great ideas.